I. Field of the Invention
The scientific method begins with observation, that is, data acquisition. Sensors extend the reach and refine the precision of a human observer. For centuries all sensors (from Galileo's telescope to Hewlett and Packard's oscilloscope) were analog in nature, and gathered data only in forms that humans could perceive. Then sensors reached beyond the visible (across the electromagnetic spectrum, out into the astronomically distant heavens, down into the infinitesimally small, and eventually reaching within the atom to observe the operations of the nucleonic forces with the cloud chambers, radiation meters and scintillographs of physics). Sensors also have moved from observing static to moving to dynamic to forever-energetic conditions, until now even the flickering wisps of perception, thought, and life in the living brain have become viewable (as shifting colors within the frame of a living skull) through positive emission tomography. Yet observation alone, no matter how extended by sensors, is not all that there is to the scientific method.
Recording data that had been acquired allowed it to be transmitted across both distance and time. Allowed the data to be compared and contrasted, added to, sorted, ordered and re-ordered and classified. Yet important as the art of Taxonomy was and remains to progress today, the ancients such as Aristotle and Galen knew of such—and yet none of the classical scholars, the Greeks of Athens, the Romans of the Augustan Empire, or the Arabs of Cordoba used the scientific method. Observations were recorded and transmitted, but not used. Few made any comparison, or queried whether such comparisons might mean anything beyond what had been stated by the preceding authorities. Recording data alone, no matter how accurate the transcription or honest and skilled the monk, never lit up the dark age ere the Renaissance.
Recording enables comparison, and comparison eventually leads to analysis; and analysis, first to questions, then to theory, then to testing. Flaws in one attempt at data acquisition led to a second, improved attempt. Observations and recordings began to become connected, one set to another. Eventually, a new process evolved, wherein recital of data one had acquired was no longer sufficient. Observation, comparison and review of the process of data acquisition, as well as of the data acquired, became crucial to the new experimenters. To ensure accuracy, reproducibility became the watchword: to ensure reproducibility, observing and commenting upon the process became as much a part of the dynamic of data acquisition as the observations themselves. The scientific method may have arisen from data acquisition, but it depends as much if not more on observation of itself in process, on the dynamic structure and storage and analysis of process and result together. It is the interaction of the observer with the process, the annotation and analysis of the process during the acquisition, that fully enables the scientific method to reach its most rapid and useful stage. The scientist could take his instrument and notebooks into the field with him, make and annotate his observations synchronously and interactively, and thus remain thoroughly and directly in control of the overall process to ensure its most efficient and effective operation.
The final step from abstract reasoning to practical application of the new scientific method was formalized when merely theorizing (on the results of the data acquired or on the process as annotated) no longer proved sufficient: when action based on such observations became possible even during the process. The feedback had to operate on both the action and the process itself, for no one could guarantee ahead of time whether a particular error might arise from the instrument, the process, or an unexpected element in the environment.
A modern scientist, technician, or even methodical businessman, depends on data collection, analysis, and action to continually refine, improve, and further his knowledge and exertions.
Armed with analog sensors to seek out data, with means to record the data, and means to compare and analyze the data, he yet would be floundering, drowning in a sea of events and observations beyond human capacities were it not for one further major innovation; the computer. Mastery (or at least control) of details in digital form serves as the tool for the human brain, as the sensor serves as the tool for the human sense. But to bring the two together, the analog must be converted to the digital, the data formatted to that which the computer, rather than the human, may read and recall. Yet it and the results of such analysis must also be presented back to the user in a form he can comprehend and make use of with the minimum of special training, to render the feedback process most effective. Data became digital for faster, more efficient evaluation. The notebook became the digital computer, with number-crunching analytical prowess. Early computers were room-sized; early analog-to-digital converters were suitcase sized. And as a consequence of this transformation, field observations of the human observer and the subsequent analysis became once again separated; the human was displaced in location or time from the interaction between sensor and environment. Only at the very end of this century did the potential for reuniting the observer in the field with the instruments of both observation and analysis once more become feasible.
The faster that data can be acquired, or the more remote it is from purely human capabilities, the more crucial becomes the ability to use human judgment of context and condition during acquisition. Testing, observing, reacting, and testing again speeds up the process, made more accurate the results. The processing between the ears of the observer was and still is as important as the processing between the sensor and the data record. And the demand has been ever-growing for means to bring this method to the hand and eye of the individual observer and actor at the test-site and during a session; this reduces the costs and problems which any removal in time or space can cause to invalidate an experiment. The more human involvement can be assured, the less robust and rigid need the pre-designed or pre-made sensors and acting responses be. The closer the feedback, the more efficient the entire process becomes. Yet the more that information can be duplicated, distributed, and opened to external commentary, suggestion, analysis, or action, the more valuable any given set of observations may become. One needs data that fits within both the hand of the user and can be shared globally with colleagues everywhere, for the best and most powerful application of such data. And users need tools that fit them (and the environment of their use), or that can be changed by the user to do so, to make the best use of the users time and the effort of bringing the tools to the task and into the field.
This has led to an easily-stated problem; how can a human bring tools for his senses and his mind into the field, where the observations will be taken? People can only carry so much (just as they can only sense so much or remember so much or compare so much), at anyone time and in one place. Portability becomes crucial, for data exists where it exists and not (however much the pure scientist may wish it) solely and easily within the confines of a laboratory environment. No mountain will come to Mohammed should he wish to measure its height with a non-portable laser altimeter and hundred-kilogram mainframe with full tape decks (to process the results of each sighting shot)!
This invention generally relates to a device and method for data acquisition, comparison, and analysis that comprises a hand-held computer device with an attachable module having its own associated analog sensor, and having stored software suited or adaptable to the sensor, the attachable module, and that particular user for that particular use. The invention includes hardware and software that lets the human interact with computer and sensor combinations, that permits event- rather than clock-driven observations, that allows human senses, capabilities, and judgment to serve as an extension to the computer and digital processing synergistically with the computer's and sensor's capabilities, thereby most readily and flexibly extending that of the human. A further extension of the invention specifically allows the annotation of both the process and environmental context of the data acquisition beyond the limitations of the particular sensor and attachable module, capturing the ‘between the ears’ processing of the human observer, which can be as critical to ensure that the meaning is correctly ascribable to the results of the process as the data observations themselves are. A still further extension of the invention specifically allows interaction with the hand-held computer and associated attachable module with its sensor in order to calibrate and examine the combination, creating the potential for correctly evaluating the entire environment including the sensor and the process on which the data acquisition and analysis depends. And a still-further extension of the invention allows the interaction between the external conditions and the computer or the human or both together, thereby creating the opportunities for feedback loops and dynamic adaptation in real time. Once the data-acquisition dynamic is thus made available to the hand-held computer's user, because there is the potential for further linkage to additional, externally-based resources (such as an external computer. additional memory, further sensor, or additional programming), the flexibility and adaptability become limited only by what the communication channels can bear or the human user can manage, operate, handle, or is carrying to which the hand-held can be also adapted or modified to process and control. (No claim is made for using additional human observers in the data acquisition, comparison, or analysis; the use of trainees or graduate student assistants is already well-known, however imperfectly practised.)
For example, a human user could carry the hand-held computer device with an associated attachable module and sensor attached thereof for testing soil pH into the field to track and trace a suspected spill from an underground pipeline of an environmentally-hazardous substance. By calibrating the sensitivity to match the current environmental conditions, ranging from the day's temperature to the mix of soils subject to being tested, the most useful range of readings may be assured. Simultaneously, the user can be adding annotations as to smells, or sights, which the analog sensor and hand-held computer are not currently equipped to detect yet which may add or explain significance of readings, such as noting a ‘discoloration’ on the surface of the soil or indeed on the probe when withdrawn from the soil. The user could also correctly annotate the calibration process such that conversion from one set of records to the next could be accurately made. And, by using the connection to a network, the user might even be able to order the shut-down of the nearest valves to the greatest concentration of the spill and the opening of all those ‘downstream’ in the pipeline, thereby allowing the maximum safe drainage and minimizing the total extent of the spill. What previously may have required teams of workers, fields of sensors, repeated runs of sensor placements, test-runs, and off-site analysis, taking hours or days or weeks, can now become a single interactive process that combines the best of both human and digital capabilities in a portable, flexible, synergistic format.
It is this combination of capabilities that makes the difference from prior inventions in this field. Most leave out the human operator or human element, leaving themselves vulnerable to any internal failure in the sensor or the system, leaving themselves blind and deaf to elements of the environment forming the context for their data acquisition that may affect the process and the results, separating themselves from the human-based capabilities and skills and therefore having to repeat or re-run or re-evaluate the data acquisition results when problems or concerns or questions about the process arise, rather than solving them on the spot at the time. Many leave out the capability to act in real-time and on the spot as a consequence of immediate analysis, thereby abandoning all potential for a feedback-based interactive process. Also left out are the capabilities (1) to annotate the process and observations on a real-time basis by the in-the-field user or operator of the device; and (2) to calibrate the device/sensor/software combination for each particular context, whose absence either requires blind faith in the perfectibility of human-driven data acquisition and computer-monitored analog sensing, or risks creating an unreviewable and irreproducible (and hence. unusable) recording lacking contemporaneous evaluation of its accuracy, validity, and completeness.
As the user's input is a crucial portion of this invention, there are many formats which may be known by or familiar to a particular user. A user interface that can be customized by an individual user to that format which is most suitable for his current need (for sometimes accuracy, sometimes a more general summary, and sometimes the merest of assurances, are needed for the annotative, analytical, and active phases of the entire feedback process; but a user who cannot chose which is most appropriate at the moment will find his capacity limited by the harshly imposed process constraints of the system. Accordingly, an aspect of this invention is the deliberate capacity for flexibly altering the user interface according to the particular needs of the user as determined by the context and time of his interaction with the entire process.
The combination of human and computer capabilities synergistically permits adaptation to and awareness of contextual events, giving the user and the system a flexibility not feasible otherwise. Most data collection can be more readily made duplicable and analyzable if first digitized, yet the process of collection and digitization may require supervision or calibration to cope with differences between expectations and real-world conditions. Transitory or unpredictable conditions that otherwise may create tremendous difficulties for computer handling, or which may otherwise require invalidation of an entire run due to concerns over sensor or digitization flaws, can be annotated by a user or subjected to immediate re-evaluation. Analysis that suggests intervention or alteration can be performed by the human user who is on the spot, or signaled by or through him to handle problems beyond the scope of a particular specialized computer program or hardware. Both digitized analog sensors taking readings and human actions can be controlled either by the hand-held computer or user, while supported by a computer or network's worth of specialized records, programming, and actions. The capability to sense, evaluate, compare analyze, and act based on contextual cues from sensors not present or currently activated in the hand-held computer, or from machine-based sensor readings not otherwise accessible to a human user, allows immediate context-based feedback on both the process and the results. Experimental corrections can be made that incorporate local or remote judgment and analysis without delay or separation between the observer and the actor through the intermediary of the hand-held device with the appropriate attachable module and associated sensors.
2. Description of the Related Art